An episode, rather a scene, of the new TV series House of the Dragons has indeed proved that it is just as adept at continuing the same genre as Game of Thrones.
Director Miguel Sapochnik has already commented on the backlash on social media over the brutal depiction of forced births, which prompted some viewers to demand that HBO’s new spin-off issue a warning before the premiere episode. Gati
“We made sure to show it to as many women as possible and asked the same question, ‘Was this scene too violent for you?'” Miguel Sapochnik told a roundtable. And the unanimous answer was no.’
This gruesome childbirth scene for Queen Emma, the wife of King Viserys, played by Seán Brooke, is tedious and long. The birth of her child of unknown gender is complicated, which her medieval-inspired ‘doctor’ is unable to correct.
An important official of the kingdom tells the Grand Master Shah that both his wife and the newborn child cannot survive, but he has a way to save only one. In this scene, a fully conscious and unwilling woman is forced to perform a caesarean section.
The heir-seeker Shah, convinced that the baby will be a boy, allows the medical team to proceed. The scene after that is so terrifying that I finally left the room. Emma is forced into bed. Her faint smile turns to terror as she realizes what is being done to her.
The camera cuts to, and then clumsily cuts to scenes of the game being fought on horseback outside the castle. She dies. So does the child, who happens to be a boy – adding to Viserys’ anxiety. It was a waste of life. It was the perfect abuse of Cianbrooke, the only member of House Targaryen who looked genuinely good with full white blonde hair.
Like many viewers, I hated this scene – not just for being unnecessarily graphic, but for being completely subpar to the plot. In a series that had something new to say about mistreatment of women, such a brutal moment would be the culmination of a long and sweet story. Here, it’s a means to an end: a brutal shortcut to setting up a family feud between the king’s brother – an unnaturally blond Matt Smith – and his similarly-looking daughter Emma D’Arcy.
Yes, until the heartbroken king, haunted by guilt, plays a power game the day after the funeral.
I think the secondary purpose of this scene is to establish the king’s villainous character, but if that’s the justification, more could have been done for his decision. The only character to express any objection is his now motherless daughter, who agrees to accept the responsibility of heir to the throne in exchange for the loss.
And what about juxtaposing this scene with the excessive violence of a fight? The series does more to highlight the mistreatment of women than it does the difficult lives of professional athletes of the era.
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At the same conference, attended by website Insider, Miguel Sapochnik detailed his process for creating the scene: ‘We shouldn’t shy away from what happened because it’s making a point. There seems to be a real dynamic for women, which is what this choice is all about.’ A comment that might assume that female ‘activists’ are a fair thought for a fantasy TV series.
(Emma) doesn’t need a choice. She is effectively murdered by her husband. And this is a good indication of the state of the world in which we live.
It is hard to imagine the quality of gender-based violence being less important than ‘world-building’. Because whatever the truth, these scenes are painful to watch, numbing and possibly normalizing. This is not to say that we should never show gruesome violence again, just that whenever we do, it should be meaningful enough – it should convey to the audience something that only violence can do.
But House of the Dragon wasn’t making a fundamental point about violence against women in its premiere, or even being informative given the state of abortion rights in America. It was using a woman’s trauma as a less mature plot to drive the story forward. Pretending that it was something else is pure imagination.
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